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NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH) — Every week school principal, Janet Brown-Clayton meets with her leadership team to collaborate and pour over data from the State Department of Education. The state labels Lincoln-Bassett school as low performing and they want that to change. The educators all signed on to make sure every child at Lincoln-Bassett gets the education they deserve.

“We are working on foundational skills that for whatever reason if the students didn’t have them before we are building them there and then building their abilities with fractions and decimals. So that’s where we are seeing growth,” said Brown-Clayton.

The school entered “Turnaround” in 2014 and since then they’ve seen great gains. Brown-Clayton and her team made learning come alive for students with new technology like laptops and projectors.

“They can manipulate and look at numbers, they can do interactive lessons where they can actually see numbers, words, phrases being manipulated that’s one of the things that’s we’ve done,” said Brown-Clayton.

The principal says attendance is a chronic problem.

“With students not coming to school early it happens to build a habit or become habitual later. So we’ve been very very pinpoint about working on the attendance in kindergarten and engaging our parents,” said Brown-Clayton.

The school’s assistant principal says another hurdle is math.

“We have teachers, interventionists that are taking small groups of children and providing them with exactly what they need,” said Assistant Principal, Jenny Clarino.

The educators say they hope their hard work will pay off for the students and the community.

“Our vision is that we will be a school of distinction for the growth and gains we make academically. We will impact the community that we exist in,” said Brown-Clayton.

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